Category Archives: humour

I was trying to decide on a topic for my next blog, and the word ‘elephant’ popped into my head. That’s just so totally random….and now there’s this big friggin’ elephant in the room.

Honestly, I tried to ignore it, but how do you ignore a seven-ton animal (that poops) in a two bedroom apartment? Go to the other room?
Might as well write the damn blog about elephants and get on with it.

Hey, think about this…how great would it be to be able to stick your nose in your mouth and smell your own breath? Okay, maybe not so great…but now that I think about it, elephants might have several advantages in the dating game.

For instance, they’ve got that yucky-green-stuff-in-the-teeth problem licked…no front teeth. And there’s none of that weight discrimination thing happening when everyone at the club is in the six-seven ton range. Have you always been self-conscious about your ears flapping in the wind?….mine are now looking rather dainty compared to dumbo’s. Even my wrinkly knees suddenly look kind of appealing.
Elephants do have their own set of problems I’m sure, for instance how often does your date put his nose in your plate and help himself to some of your french fries? (if you answered “all the time”, it’s time to have a relisten to “50 ways to leave your lover”).

And imagine if you accidentally sneezed while your nose was in your mouth?..you could blow the top of your head off. I don’t even want to contemplate the amount of snot a snozzola that size must produce.

But if size really does matter….weeeelllll hang on to your hat, we’re going to Georgia! (I have no idea what that means, but it sounded good).

Alrighty, I feel better now. The elephant in the room has been exorcized. I do feel obliged to tell at least one elephant joke before I go. Have you got a favorite? Remember this one?
How do you kill a blue elephant?
Shoot him with a blue elephant gun (insert groan here)
How do you kill a red elephant?
.. wait for it, wait for it….you choke him ’til he turns blue
and kill him with a blue elephant gun.

And here are a couple of the things I’ve been designing in the art department this week: (absolutely nothing to do with elephants, I’m over it) Click on the picture to go to my zazzle website.
I love these “Crazy About Polkadot” sneakers:
And this design called “Hot Metal” is available on business cards, greeting cards, mugs and more.
My photo website has been sadly ignored for a couple of weeks….taken lots of new photos but haven’t uploaded any yet. But there’s still lots of good stuff on there, so here’s the link: iiphotoArt

Someone recently told me that I was very creative. At the time, I said a polite thank you, but walked away thinking “Who me? They obviously don’t know what the heck they’re talking about” (okay, to be honest, I probably said “hell”, but that’s a discussion for a whole other blog).
Anyway, my point is, someone like a Jonathon Winters or a Robin Williams who can ramble off a myriad of random thoughts spontaneously; that’s a creative mind…but it’s certainly not me.
I have to work at it. Hell (oops, that one slipped out) I don’t even have fantasies because it’s too much work. What I create doesn’t just drop into my head from the cosmos fully-formed, I have to struggle with it for a while before it takes shape.
So I mentioned all this to my son (not the fantasies part, that’s TMI). His take on it really made me re-evaluate my self-perception. Basically his response was: ‘What you’re talking about is divine intervention, not creativity. Of course you have to work at it! It wouldn’t be any fun if it was all just handed to you.”
Wow…just like that….I ‘m an artist. A struggling artist. Halleluya!
So here are a couple of the babies I created this week (with more pain than any childbirth I ever suffered, I might add). They’re from a new line of products I call IMH™ (In My Heart).
For some reason all those popular I ♥ signs you see everywhere bug me…forgive my literal brain, but when I see that cute little ♥ symbol, I automatically translate that as “heart”, not “love”. Anyway, another problem solved. Now I have everything I love, right where it belongs…inside my heart.

These, and lots more on my zazzle site at iiphotoArt
Maybe I am creative….(I’ll have to struggle with that concept for a while).
And I do have random thoughts (there goes one now) but I just can’t vocalize them like Robin Williams. Maybe what I really need is a good speech therapist. Anyone got a referral?

Do animals talk to you? I don’t mean the totally-whacked-out-voices-in-your-head kind of talk to you, but do you project human emotions and speech onto the animals you run into? I do. Because I can. It’s my blog and I can do whatever freakydeaky thing I want and hey, why not, it’s fun!

This gull for instance, in my feverish little brain, sounds just like my brother Neale, except with a sort of upperclass, English accent…slightly snooty and unfailingly polite.

And this handsome guy speaks to me in a Humphrey Bogartish kinda tone, oozing smooth and self-confidence…and he has an excellent pickup line.

But apparently, animals have a different mindset than us, because they say things that you just don’t hear in everyday conversation:

And are you like me? do you hover like a hungry lion over the card section in the drugstore …waiting to pounce on that perfect card? I could (and have) spent hours reading all the goofy animal cards. Mostly, I’m left feeling hungry. I end up looking at their cute little faces and have to write new lines for them because the cardwriters humour is just a little too bland for my tastes…I like something that packs a punch…maybe with a smidge of weirdness thrown in there for flavor.
Finally though, I have the perfect solution, I’m using my own photos and adding my own text…that means no more saccherine-sweet cards for Auntie Mable; no more lovey-dovey-googoo-gaga stuff for my sons’ birthdays. It’ll be nothing but poop and crunching birdbones from now on….now that I can talk to the animals and they are talking back.

How many ways do you know to skin a cat?
My apologizes to all the cat lover’s for daring this gruesome question…but wait a minute…..don’t string me up yet!
To reassure you, I do not know how to skin a cat. I have a distinct lack of knowledge in this area. I assume you could go from top to bottom, front to back maybe? tippytoes to tail? That would be strictly supposition of course…..I have no personal experience with the situation. It has got me thinking though, hmmmmm…..if I was going to, how would I…oh, sorry,that’s not really what I wanted to talk about.
The real question is, why in the world do I say‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’?!!! Okay, granted, I don’t say it often, but I have said it. And I say it with such authority…as if I really did know what I was talking about! I use that and other weird, home-grown expressions…without giving it much thought.
Did this saying originate back-in-the-day when people really did skin cats??? Was there such a day? Ugggghhh. All right, I admit I have no love for cats…they’re just so darned snotty, but I don’t skin everything I take a disliking to. As a matter of fact, I’m humane enough to transport spiders outside instead of squishing them.
Ok, I’m a humane, blathering idiot….and, like a cat, I’m curious. Curious about everything. Including skinning cats, including this strange language that pours unintentionally from my mouth. Yes, I know, curiousity killed the cat. But wait…..do I know that? Is it really dead? There are certainly enough of them running around alive. There’s this big orange tomcat who turns up his nose at me every day as he blithely poopoos in my garden…and he’s certainly curious enough to be the one they mean.
On reflection though, I use too many of these old expressions…more than you can shake a stick at.
Why are you shaking a stick at me? You look really silly.

Nevermind, this blog has all gone to pot (and you can interpret that expression any way you want)
For more humour, check out some of the wacky truisms on my new site at zazzle. Lots of great gifts for that person who has everything (including a sense of humour).

Share this:

Like this:

Does anyone else besides me find “lol” totally insufficient to express themselves?
I seldom lol, as a matter of fact it takes a pretty surprising joke to get me to lol. Most of the time it’s a polite smile or a groan…depending on the quality of the humour and delivery of the jokester.
It kinda feels like I’m lying when I write “lol”…..it’s not really what I’m feeling and I’d like to express myself accurately, even on ‘twitter”. I’ve seen virtual fights break out when someone misreads the true emotions of a texter!

This week, I was working hard to get a new store up and running at ‘zazzle.ca’, and I decided to remedy the “lol” dilemma. I came up with my own list of acronyms that work better for me. Feel free to appropriate any that might help keep your texting real.

I feel goooood about this! Maybe when word spreads, I will have helped people communicate and end some of those silly squabbles that are always cropping up on forums!…s.o.d.
Check out this and other new and twisted truisms at my new zazzle storeiiphotoArt at ZAZZLE
Oh!…and don’t miss more great photography atiiphotoArt on FAA

I’m a photographer and I love photography….when I’m out taking photos, I find hours have passed that feel like moments. And words…I love words. Words and photos. Two of my interests, and also two of my greatest #$%^# frustrations! (I’ll stop being so polite once I know you a little better). So what better to blog about than two of my favorite things… light-play and word-play?

Since you brought it up, I want to talk to you about the word ‘juggernaut’. You gotta love that word don’t you? It has such ummm… what’s the word? Such cadence …that’s it, cadence.

Someone with more nerve than tact asked me one day, “Jugg——er——naut?” Being of relatively small size in the upper chest area, and not wanting to exaggerate, I answered, “Definitely Naut!!”

Okay, that’s ridiculous, but I wanted an excuse to use the word. And how often do you get to throw ‘juggernaut’ into your conversation? And what the heck is a juggernaut anyway? Wait! Don’t swamp me with responses to that question; I just googled it and apparently you might create one!

Although I love words, I frequently lose them, forget where I put them, and the right one usually seems to elude me. It’s one of those love-hate relationships. Blogging is such a boon to conversationally-challenged people like me! I can use the backspace until my fingers turn blue and you can’t hear me going …umm, er. Meanwhile I can surreptitiously look for that word I left in some dusty corner of my mind.

My other passion, photography, creates just as many challenges; I must thrive on adversity.

For the photo above, the challenge was to get the chess piece in just the right location, and leave it there for exactly the right length of time. The photo is titled ‘Knight Moves’. It’s a long-exposure shot taken with the chess piece moved to different locations on the board and painted with light in each new spot. I wanted the opacity to vary so it took numerous repeats of the shot to get the timing down. I was happy with the end result.

Next time I blog, I’ll probably ramble on about whatever interesting word pops into my head at the time….it’ll be easier than trying to remember what the damn word was that I was planning to blog about. And I’ll share my latest photography problem, I mean opportunity:) with you …..

Got a favorite word or words that are fun to play with?….throw them over. Into any unusual photography experiments?…I’d love to hear about it.